Lincoln, Houston, & Texas

[Wild Bill]

Lincoln's overestimation of Unionist strength in 1861 Texas was a common fault he and his administration and for Unionism in he test of the South. He thought the average Southern white was exactly like he in being against the slave power in the South, which showed how ling he had been out of the South and Southern culture.

Did Houston actually proclaim secession after Texas voted for it? My impression was that he refused, but I could be wrong. Secession brought back the notion of a separate a Republic to older Texans, which Houston might have been able to abide. But when he was told he had to take an oath to the Confederacy, he resigned his office, rather than do that. He was Andrew Jackson's ideological partner to the end.

I do not believe that the US Army had the power to retake Texas after Brig Gen David Twiggs surrendered federal forces in the state. They barely held on to Ft. Pickens and the troops there probably could not have held Galveston (or Brownsville) if they were transferred there. Wonder who would have commanded them?

Since Baylor was already organizing his Great Buffalo Hunt seeking to capture Mesilla, New Mexico, and nearby Tucson in AZ (full of potential Rebels, much to the horror modern Arizonans who still wonder why the Confederate flag, along with Mexico's and Spain's, is raised in all modern parades), it is possible that Texas could not have retaken Galveston either. But eventually Texas would have raised enough troops to overwhelm the Yankees in Galveston and force a US surrender a second time. But it might have changed every one's emphasis on the East Coast and Washington for a while--but not long. It was sideshow because of geopolitical reasons. Washington and the war were a long way away.

Rick Smith and I did a study of Isaac Surratt for the Courier for anyone interested in Texas, “Isaac in Texas--A Theoretical Look at the Other Surratt,” SURRATT COURIER , 33 (November 2008), 3-7, and I have written a couple of books on the US Army's reoccupation of Texas after the war, and the Freedmen's Bureau in the state during Reconstruction--both considered very controversial, of course.